To The Max

The new director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a lively Austrian with wide-ranging experience and a belief that ancient and modern art play well together. Dodie Kazanjian meets Max Hollein. 

WHEN MAX HOLLEINLEARNEDLAST March that the search for a new director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was down to two people—and he was one of them—he went to see Diane B. “Dede” Wilsey, the imperial president and main patron of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, where he had been director for less than two years. “Take the job,” she told him. “You’re going to be chosen, and you should know that it’s a great compliment to us.”

Hollein, who as of this August is the Met’s tenth director, strikes many people as being preposterously well qualified for the position. Forty-nine years old and armed with degrees in art history and business administration, he has already directed five museums and overseen the fund-raising and building of a new wing for one of them. He’s curated shows that range from old-master art to Pablo Picasso and Jeff Koons, and delivered excellent admissions. He gets along equally well with artists, curators, board members, donors, and scholars. The only downside to his appointment is that he’s not a woman: Here we are again with another white male director, and a European one at that. (Counting Max, half of the Met’s directors have been European.)

At a moment when the museum is struggling to regain its balance after a period of turmoil and the abrupt (many say unjust) ousting of the previous director, Thomas Campbell, the Met’s trustees apparently decided against breaking the mold.